It's true! Chocolate really can improve your health - but only if it's dark

Can chocolate really be good for us? It’s a bit like saying that ice cream will make you live longer. How can something so naughty, so delicious, be good for us? Stories about the health-giving properties of chocolate appear from time to time and I greet each one with profound scepticism, not forgetting that there are nearly always some commercial interests behind publicising the supposed benefits. Research by the food and pharmaceutical industries can’t be true, can it?The evidence on chocolate is accumulating and may have just reached the tipping point. We’re talking about the dark kind, not the more addictive milk variety. The latest study examined the effects of chocolate on stress in 30 healthy people for two weeks.Every day, each volunteer was given 40g (about four squares) of dark chocolate, eating half in the morning and half in the afternoon.Using standard, accepted psychological and biochemical tests, stress levels were measured before, during and after the study. The results surprised me. We know chocolate soothes, pampers and spoils. But it also turns out it relieves stress. The levels of stress-related hormones like cortisol dropped in everyone, including those who were highly anxious at the beginning. The research concluded that eating a small amount of dark chocolate every day as part of a healthy diet can help people who are stressed. You’ll notice I keep repeating “dark chocolate”. In the study, the chocolate was made of 70% cocoa solids and it’s these that are rich in the alkaloid chemicals, which affect cellular metabolism. If you’re not convinced, there are two more studies. The second involving 1,000 people found those who ate chocolate a few times a week were, on average, slimmer than those who hardly ate it at all.The scientists claim chocolate contains ingredients that may favour weight loss rather than fat accumulation. The third study confirms that moderate quantities of dark chocolate can lower blood glucose and bad LDL cholesterol and therefore the risk of heart disease. But it only works if you don’t gorge.